My pervasive spy network of high-authority double-agents on aloha.pk has recently brought to my attention that several of the maps from the babel rotation have mysteriously vanished. In some instances, eradication is no doubt greatly welcomed. In other cases, however, such as this or that, it seems unfair that a such a destructive fate was administered. Was there a general consensus that these maps offered a poor gameplay experience and needed the boot? Or was this just the dubious behavior of big brother at work from behind the curtains?

- crossfire3 (griefing was a bit annoying there though)- toast- random (sometimes a bit unfair for one side but it was still nice to have a gen map on)- encampement- pincushion (yeah, i like long maps^^ griefers are also a problem here sadly)- PADesert (maybe an alternative to binladencompound?)- trb (very old map, should have more building oriented gameplay as there is lots of water)- Islandpassage (similar to Island, short map if boundary damage is added)- mazemountain (was very challenging sometimes but im actually missing this one)- or at least another maze map maybe (mazehills was alright, another one was also fun, looking at the map stats it might've been "ruins")- gobi (maybe an alternative to spitfire)- pinpoint2 (with boundary damage)- battlefarm 128 (could be put into the rotation alternating with the regular battlefarm)- goldbeach- mirage (in alternation with halongbabel maybe)- jungletest (i made a complete map of this, but this one is suited much better for babel since its very small)- another turv - standoff (i remember call of liberty having this one, seemed alright for babel and therefore very builder friendly)- probably a whole lot of other maps by Danke which i haven't even seen or dont remember

With that in mind, what about the purpose behind that entire thread? Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but it doesn't seem as if any new developments to the babel rotation have recently been made. Gentlemen - we shouldn't let fear of change, laziness and/or reddit addictions cripple us.

Here is an idea to help avoid the babel map rotation from stagnating (any further) that also ensures the gears of progress remain churning:

Every (period of time, i.e. month), a discussion thread is created. In this thread, a list of babel maps to potentially be added is put forth. The forum can discuss and vote in this thread, and the winning map(s) are temporarily added to the babel rotation to be tried out.

The success of the map(s) that have been temporarily added is monitored (i.e. for a week). On the forum, their success can be discussed, and perhaps even statistical methods such as player fluctuations can be taken into consideration.

Though some final method of decision, the map(s) are either deemed successful or unsuccessful. Based on this decision, the maps are either taken back off of the rotation, or they're kept there permanently.

Obviously, this forum can be rather sleepy at times, so perhaps the previous idea isn't always going to work. Nonetheless, that is my idea, but I'm not the one who has the power to make such things happen (aside from my devious and subtle manipulations). Food for thought, old eggs.

As far as I know we removed mazemountain because it was too easy to attack and too difficult to defend. The map provides an inordinate amount of cover, so matches would just drag on for hours, which seems like an unpopular theme for maps.

I was thinking yesterday about some kind of weekly change in the rotation for new maps to be tried, but I was worried it would just end up being Danke's Variety Hour since there doesn't seem to be a lot of new content coming in (at least in terms of babel maps).

As for lard and yubacore, both were pretty strongly reviled ingame by players. Both spawn you often in unpleasant places (on buildings or on power lines). Yubacore could probably be tweaked script-wise to prevent that, but lard seems to me like the quintessential map that shows the difference between people who want to play to the objective of the game vs people who want to play TDM on a populated server.

This is the problem with "forum" polls and input. I actually like pinline and others do too, but in terms of any vote/poll the loudest mouths control the discussion & only the people who have an account and bother to check the forums have a vote.

You are way overstating the usefulness of polls. If we went ahead with every poll on this forum we would end up banning the entire country of Brazil, closing down all our empty servers, unbanning any player with enough friends to vote on his appeal's "poll". Polls have be taken with a HUGE grain of salt, nevermind polls that are just a loaded question

I felt like mazemountain made me find creative ways to dig up the tower from underneath the maze. Most of the attacks happened up top and the towers would always break down before it got past the top. Nobody could effectively damage the base of the tower so either one team decided to raze down a third of the maze or one team eventually wins after a few hours.

Well, the worst part about Mazemountain was that you need both people on the ground-floor and people on top of the mountain, since both are necessary to defend your tower/builders. The people in the bottom have extremely limited visibility since the hallways were so small, so they usually just end up digging to the other side and getting killed and the people on the top usually lag off and fall down or get sniped while they're parkouring around.